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Feb 19, 2021
What is Japanese whisky? Despite its meteoric rise on the global connoisseur market, until this week that question was more complicated to answer than you might expect.
Unlike bourbon and Scotch born of the United States and Scotland, respectively the preferred brown spirit of Japan carried no actual denomination of origin. As long as the liquor was bottled within the country, it could be sourced from anywhere on the planet.
“To say that whisky-making regulations in Japan are loose is a major understatement,” Stefan van Eycken, author of “Whisky Rising: The Definitive Guide to the Finest Whiskies and Distillers of Japan,” told Bloomberg in 2019. “If they were any looser, you’d be able to sell tap water as Japanese whisky.”
The Next Great Japanese Whisky Is Here, And It s Affordable
Kirk Miller, provided by
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Where it’s from: Mars crafts most of its whiskey in the Nagano Alps, making it Japan’s highest-elevation distillery. But they have another distillery along the humid coast in the south. As well, they
also age some of their hooch in a building on a Natural Heritage Site in a subtropical jungle.
The three expressions we tried from Mars Whisky
High Road Spirits
Why we’re drinking this: The demand for Japanese whisky has exploded over the years. But so have prices. Finding smaller producers Mars is the fourth-largest in Japan but much less known than, say, Suntory or Nikka is important for the future of the category.